Dinomorphs Five: Revelation
by Gryphinwyrm7
Summary: The Pemalite Ship has been stolen by persons unknown. Can the Animorphs and Erek the Chee put aside their bad blood in order to recover it?


Chapter One

My name is Tobias Fangor. Former Animorph, full-time Red-Tailed Hawk.

I know I've become somewhat famous in the years between the end of the Yeerk War and the Present. Toby Hamee once showed me the 'Where are They Now' video CNN did on me a few years ago.

It was actually almost touching.

I know my Aunt and Uncle both tried to get rich off being related to me following the war, until Marco published my War Diaries and it came out how shitty they treated me.

I know my mother continued to search for me even years later.

I didn't care.

The only thing I've ever cared about. The only thing that ever made me even consider being human again was Rachel.

And Jake sent her to her death.

I would never forgive him for that. Never.

But there was one other person in the entire galaxy that I cared about. Ax.

So when Jake asked me to help save him…I agreed. I agreed to be an Animorph again. For Ax's sake. For my _Shorm._ For my uncle.

Turns out that he had been consumed by a sentient virus that was one-part John Carpenter's The Thing, and one Part The Borg.

It took his mind. It mutated his body.

We got his body back. But not his mind. The body we'd recovered was horribly mutated. With a twisted red mouth on his Andalite face and crab-like pincers on his arms.

Quite frankly he didn't seem…Andalite…anymore. According to the super-genius-inventor of Morphing tech; Escafil-Roonwitt-Nothlit, Ax's mind wasn't even in his body anymore. The Ellimist only knows what The One was doing with it.

This was the reason that we were all at a quarry near St. Louis, somewhere between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

{Tachyons,} Escafil was explaing. {Such as those produced during a _Sario Rip_ can have unstable and unpredictable effects on my Morphing technology.}

A thought occurred to me.

{Like…Not healing when you morph?} I asked, remembering my broken wing during my stay in the Mezazoic Era.

{Yes, that is a common one,} Escafil confirmed. {To ensure the stability of individual morphing matrixes, I have programmed a failsafe into my morphing technology to prevent corruption of morphs.}

"What?" Marco asked, frowning.

Escafil let out a heavy sigh through his Andalite nostrils. {I gave the tech a reset button. Bombarded with enough Tachyons, the Morphing technology will reset itself, forcing the body to inventory its existing morphs and restoring Aximili to the age he was when he first touched the Cube.}

The Andalite scanned us with all four of his eyes.

{You might want to step back. Once triggered, a Morph inventory cannot be stopped, and it is exhausting. Particularly if you have many morphs, as we do.}

I fluttered up to a dead tree near the edge of the water in the base of the quarry. Jake and Marco stepped back. Escafil fired the mounted canon at Ax's body. For a moment, nothing happened, and then rapidly Ax's mutated body began shrinking. His fur turning a deeper purps, and his face becoming almost koala-like.

{A Djabbla,} Escafil said. {Standard first morph. Likely he acquired a Kafit bird next.}

{He didn't actually,} I commented. {Ax was trying to be a model cadet, so he tried not to break any—WHAT THE HELL!}

I had tumbled off of my tree and fallen to the ground as my talons were changing shape. They had twisted into almost human like hind-paws. My feathers gave way to fur. My beak softened.

{I'm morphing!} I yelped.

{The Tachyons must have ricocheted off of the quarry walls and hit you! I'm sorry Tobias. Your template is resetting as well. Was the raccoon your first morph?}

{Actually my cat was,} I said. {But it is my first morph since I got the morphing power back. I'm guessing Dude's DNA was deleted then?}

{Most likely,} Escafil said.

My raccoon body suddenly shuddered and I began shooting up. My fur vanished, my skin became leathery.

{Hork-Bajir,} I commented. {Am I morphing straight from one morph to another?}

{Yes,} Escafil said. {That's how it works. The morphing reset needs to inventory your morphs. To do that it has to turn off the safety protocols that prevent morphing straight from one form to another. Similar to a morphing allergy, only this time it's on purpose. Don't worry, those firewalls will be restored after the process has ended.}

I flexed my Hork-Bajir arms and noticed that Ax's body was now a Tiger Shark. It flopped helplessly by the edge of the water. I moved to help the shark, but before I could get there, it's skin turned a sort of caramel color, and hair began sprouting on it's head.

Human.

And I was morphing into a human as well. My Hork-Bajir blades were retracting, my tail shriveling up. Ax and I watched each other shift into human form.

"Ax-man?" I asked as my Hork-Bajir Beak became a human mouth.

Ax's human morph opened it's mouth and a weird sort of sizzling sound came out.

I took a step back.

{I was afraid of that,} Escafil said. {His mind is still in the clutches of the one. We hold only War-Prince Aximilli's body. Nothing more.}

Ax's human hands began to shift into Lobster claws.

Likewise I was shifting from human to horse. A black colored stallion. Ax's lobster shrank down even further, transforming into an Ant.

"Keep an eye out for ants from a different colony!" Jake yelped as he realized what the lobster was shrinking into. Unfortunately I was somewhat occupied as my body was shifting into that of a dolphin. Dolphins did not belong in rock quarries.

Nor did hammerhead sharks, to my dismay, as I found myself suffocating. Worse yet, Ax's body was now going from ant to Northern Harrier hawk.

"Don't let him fly away!" Jake yelped.

{I doubt he will get far,} Escafil offered.

True enough, the Northern Harrier began to turn brown and segment Crinkling up and transforming into a cockroach. Likewise my shark body was segmenting and I was shrinking. My compound eyes formed and I found myself relieved that I was no long asphyxiating.

Fly became mole. I was blind. Unable to see anything. Mole became bat. 'Blind as a bat' is inaccurate. Bats see just fine. Not as good as my hawk vision, but well enough to see Ax's fly morph becoming a doppleganger of Jake. Or rather…Jake when he was 14. A far cry from the 24 year old Jake standing next to him. Morphs don't age, after all (with the exception apparently being my human morph, which I think the Ellimist tampered with.)

The Jake morph sprouted two feathery tufts and began to shrink. A great horned owl.

I would have been alarmed if I was still in my bat morph, but I was shrinking down into a mosquito morph. Far beyond the owl-morph's instincts.

Mosquito senses are practically worthless. I could smell sweat and sense heat from warm blooded animals, but I wasn't fighting the mosquito's instincts to suck blood or anything. If anything, I was bored.

Then, I tumbled to the ground as hollow bones filled my exoskeleton. My proboscis dissolved into a snout. Loose scales formed over my body as crests of feathery fur appeared on the back of head.

{Deinonychus!} I yelped as my claws formed. At the same time, Ax's owl was now a mouse.

"Your dinosaur morph?" Marco asked, aghast. "But I thought we couldn't use that morph after the Sario Rip ended!"

The mouse shrank into a flea.

{Another side effect of the tachyons,} Escafil confirmed. {So long as you didn't tamper with established history, there is no reason that your body shouldn't maintain a morph acquired in a Sario Rip. Exactly what this reset was originally designed for.}

{Cool!} I commented flexing my claws. {I always liked this morph. Hey…I stopped morphing?}

{Your body is readjusting to accessing a morph it previously could not,} Escafil said. {There will be an adjustment period.}

The color suddenly drained from Marco's face.

"Ax has a Big Rex morph!" He yelped.

All three of us swore, glancing over at the rattlesnake that was sprouting termite mandibles and segmenting.

"We've got some time," Marco said. "What if Escy blasts us with the tack gun?"

"We'd never catch up before Ax hit the Rex morph," Jake said shaking his head. "We'd be helpless before then."

The termite was morphing into a skunk.

"Rhinoceros?" Jake wondered. "It's the closest thing to a dinosaur…"

{It's a triceratops without a frill,} I said. {Tyrannosaurus Ax will have the most powerful crushing jaws in the fossil record. Without that frill you're lunch.}

"Clear the quarry?" Jake asked. "We're miles from anyone else…"

{Rex has the second best sense of smell of any known animal,} I commented. {He'll track you!}

The skunk became a spider.

"Yeah, I remember," Marco said, sighing.

Jake glanced down at the half-skunk half-spider.

"That's it!" Jake said.

Spider to bat.

Bat to horse.

Horse to seagull.

Seagull to hammerhead shark.

Hammerhead shark to mosquito.

Mosquito to Leeran.

At the Leeran morph he actually gave us pause and glanced around. I wondered if the Leeran telepathic senses were feeding him information about us.

Leeran to dolphin.

Then the dolphin's skin became leathery. His flippers turned into two-fingered hands. The smiling dolphin face twisted into the menacing rex head.

Powerful talons sprouted from underneath the animal. The dolphin had become a tyrannosaurus rex.

At that moment white feathers began to sprout on my arms.

{Damn it, NOW?!} I said as my snout became a seagull beak.

My dinosaur body shriveled up into that of a bird.

{Hey, I guess the dinosaurs really did turn into birds,} Marco quipped. I fluttered past the tyrannosaur, and landed on the dinosaur's back.

Ax turned his head towards Escafil, who stared the animal down.

Ax took a step towards Escafil….And I went blind.

I could see nothing.

Fleas can't see. Tyrannosaurus blood is surprisingly filling though.

Then I shuddered and fell off of the rex.

Because morphing is never logical, the size of my next morph, the elephant, had come before any other part.

My flea fangs twisted into elephant tusks. My eyes came back online, and saw the rex furiously attempt to claw at his face, dipping its snout into the water over and over again.

As my trunk sprouted I suddenly understood why.

Marco and Jake had morphed skunks, and sprayed Ax.

The rex's sensitive nose, normally used for scenting prey, had been used against it. The poor thing was actually suffering.

I rammed the dinosaur while it was still distracted and I was still an elephant.

I didn't really impact the animal. Elephants only weigh four tons, Tyrannosaurus rex weighs nine.

I shrank down into a rabbit as the rex desperately tried to claw it's own nose off, but the arms couldn't reach or do anything.

Rabbit to baby seal. Baby seal to polar bear. Polar bear to wolf (After the North Pole incident, Ax and I made it a point to catch up on morphs we'd missed. Whiich is why I went from wolf to cockroach.

Cockroach to sperm whale, and I found myself massively beached. Tyrannosaurus Ax walked right over to my massively expanding whale form, and took a giant bite right out of my side.

It hurt.

A lot.

Finally, as giant squid tentacles began to sprout from my face, did Ax's rex morph move past the dinosaur and into his next morph. A random human controller.

I didn't even know his name, but I had a feeling that this would crop up near the end of Ax's cycle. He'd morphed eleven different humans over the course of his time with the Animorphs. Most of them all on the same carrier.

Next up on Ax's docket was the same elephant morph. As for me, my squid morph was going ape. Chimpanzee to be precises.

Ax was a baby seal.

I was a bull.

Ax was a polar bear.

I was an eel.

Ax was a giant squid.

I was a mountain goat.

Ax was a chimpanzee.

My Andalite morph…My morph of Ax's body came next. It was nice morphing from goat to Andalite. Like a transition or something, like when I went from Dienonychus to seagull (total downgrade.)

Andalite to Orca Whale.

Chimpanzee to Hork-Bajir

Orca whale to Nartec mutant.

Hork-Bajir top Dairy cow.

Nartec Mutant to Honey bee

Dairy cow to bull.

My honeybee body shifted into that of a blond teenage girl with supermodel good looks. Taylor. The woman who tortured me.

The Taxxon morph was a step up from the Taylor morph.

Bull to mountain goat.

Taxxon to random human. Uncomfortably, I had acquired a few humans from the aircraft carrier mission as well. Cycling through faces I didn't remember and morphs I never used was uncomfortable.

Goat to Orca Whale.

Human to different human.

Awkward.

Orca Whale to cheetah.

Cheetah to honeybee

Human to human

Awkward.

Honeybee to Taxxon.

Human to beaver. Unfortunate timing as I barely dodged Ax's Taxxon jaws and got into the water as the giant centipede snapped at me.

The Taxxon began sprouting human features.

I waddled out of the quarry lake as my beaver became a german shepherd.

Ax was shifting through his nine human morphs.

German shepherd to duck. My final morph. I hadn't acquired anything since that morph.

Duck to Red-Tailed hawk.

I vomited up the snake I'd had for breakfast and shuddered. My body was exhausted, but…I was done.

And my body felt great. Refreshed even. My wing joints no longer ached in that weird way.

"Am I younger?!" I realized.

{Yes,} Escafil said. {Your body and morphs are reset to the initial point of acquisition, unfortunately for Aximilli, should we resuce his mind, he will find he had to endure adolescence all over again.}

{Jake…} I said, suddenly gasping in thought speak as Ax cycled his final human morph and shifted into a beaver form.

Standing at the edge of the quarry, walking slowly towards us, was our former friend and ally, Erek the Chee.

"Erek," Jake said hoarsely. "I never thought I'd see you again…"

"Yes, well, if I'd had my way…You wouldn't have." Erek sighed heavily. "Unfortunately…You guys are the only ones I can turn to for help."

{Anything, Erek,} I said, fluttering back to the dead tree as Ax's raccoon morph shifted into a duck. {We owe you.}

"Someone stole the Pemalite Ship," he said grimly. "I need your help getting it back."

 _ **To be continued…**_


End file.
